Lucky Hans
Hans has worked for seven years and receives a lump of gold as big as his head. On his way home he trades the gold for a horse, the horse for a cow, the cow for a pig, the pig for a goose, the goose for a grindstone. In the end the stones fall into a well. Hans jumps for joy.
“There is no one under the sun as happy as I am.”
Every trade is rational from Hans’s perspective. He always assumes the traded objects will function as they appear. The horse will carry him, the cow will give milk, the pig will provide meat. That each decision reduces the value of his wages, he does not see – not because he is foolish, but because he looks through a distinction that makes the outside invisible.
What Is a Viewpoint?
The term viewpoint is ambiguous. You stand at a point – physically – like Hans at the well. And you take a viewpoint – a conviction about what is right and good. For both, you have made a journey.
In the fairy tale, the journey is visible. We see every trade, every moment in which Hans decides. In meetings, things are often different. They begin where Hans ends: at the outcome. Someone states what is right and true, expecting responses from other participants. Another states what they consider right and true. Agreement or disagreement follows, and viewpoints whose histories of origin are invisible face each other.
You cannot seriously claim that a viewpoint is wrong. Nor can you claim it is true. Whether my viewpoint and another are identical can only be established for physical standpoints – locations in space. For mental viewpoints, identity is ruled out. Everyone constructs their world differently.
The viewpoint is visible but non-negotiable. How it came about is no longer apparent. And discourse about something invisible is difficult. Whoever wants to understand how viewpoints emerge must dig deeper – to what precedes every evaluation.
Distinguishing
The beginning is distinguishing. It sounds trivial and it is not. We do it constantly but rarely notice.
George Spencer-Brown formalized what happens when we distinguish. Whoever distinguishes separates inside from outside, marked state from unmarked state. Hans demonstrates this. The gold presses on his shoulders and prevents him from moving forward. He sees this, feels it, is preoccupied by it. That this gold is the reward for seven years of work vanishes from view immediately. “Heavy” becomes the marked side of his distinction. “Valuable/reward for labour” remains unmarked.
Distinctions draw boundaries between what is taken into view and what is excluded without being named. Hans’s blind spot is the value his employer attributes to seven years of work. But the blind spot is not as blind as one might think. Without it, without the outside, there can be no inside. The unmarked state is the background from which the distinction first becomes possible.
Whoever separates inside from outside in this way draws a boundary. This boundary is not something spatial that could be inspected. It is an operation, an event in time. It exists only in execution, in the moment of distinguishing, and not afterwards. Whoever distinguishes chooses something and thereby leaves something else in the unmarked state.
As long as someone distinguishes alone, it remains a process in their own mind. But as soon as two people meet and negotiate something, the operation becomes communication. Hans does not only distinguish in silence. Every trade is an offer or an acceptance, a transaction between two people. As readers of the fairy tale, we experience both as transparent processes. We see what Hans distinguishes, what he says, and what the other makes of it. In meetings, precisely this view is missing. We hear what someone says. What led to it in their mind, which distinction produced the viewpoint, remains hidden from us. That is precisely why stating your viewpoint is not enough. You would need to show the distinction, and even then the other sees it through their own spotlight.
Local Rationality
We do not distinguish by weighing all options. There is not enough time, overview, or usually even interest for that. We distinguish from what is currently available to us. From established views, goals, and interests. From experiences that have proven useful. From judgements about what actions we want to regard as reasonable.
This is called local rationality. Local, because the rationality is bound to one’s own horizon. Not irrational, but not the other person’s rationality either. The result is a decision that is not necessary but possible. It could have turned out differently. Hans could have endured the weight of the gold to preserve its value. He would only have needed to weigh differently. And he could have done so at any time.
Why can you not simply go back and revise the decision? Because distinguishing and deciding are operations. An operation, in the systems-theoretical sense, is an event that arises in the moment of its execution and vanishes in that same moment. It cannot be undone, reversed, or repeated. Systems always operate between the past, which no longer exists, and the expected, which does not yet exist. What remains are expectations and meaning. Operations condition the next event.
Hans’s exclamation at the well is the evaluation of the entire chain. But the individual operations that led to it are no longer accessible. They are past. What remains is a path that built up step by step, because each decision produced an outcome to which the next operation could connect.
The Path Vanishes in the Viewpoint
Meetings are rarely fairy tales. In the fairy tale we accompany Hans on every step. We read about the heat, the heavy gold, the rider passing by. In meetings we rarely experience this. What we experience is someone stating what is right. Asserting a viewpoint makes the distinctions and trade-offs that led to it invisible. Not because they are actively hidden, but because as operations they are past. They simply no longer exist.
What remains are the usual reactions. You can agree with a viewpoint, and it becomes a premise. It generates expectations and meaning that guide future decisions, without the distinctions that produced it ever having become visible. You can disagree, and then another evaluation is juxtaposed – viewpoint against viewpoint, an exchange of outcomes. Or you can remain silent, which usually functions as agreement because it does not explicitly say no. In all three cases the exchange stays on the surface. The path that led to the respective viewpoints does not come into play. That is not discourse.
Listening and Observing
If discourse is to mean that not only outcomes are exchanged but that the distinctions behind them become negotiable, then the path must come back into play. Rewinding as in a fairy tale is not possible. The operations are past. What remains is the attempt to reconstruct them. And that cannot be done alone – you need others.
Reconstruction requires willingness – namely to practise listening as inner hospitality. It is not about blind agreement with what was said, but about the attempt to create a space in which someone can reconstruct their distinctions without immediate evaluation. Most people listen while simultaneously preparing their response. This closes the space before it has opened. Hospitality means receiving without already knowing where the conversation leads.
In this context one can indeed speak of “picking someone up.” It then does not mean “I am taking you where I want you to be” but rather “I am reconstructing which distinctions led to which decisions for you.” That is the prerequisite for discourse.
Willingness alone is not enough – tools are also needed. Fritz B. Simon’s levels of observation give the space structure. Observing, describing, explaining, evaluating. Descriptions are a selection. Explaining places what is described into a context. And evaluation condenses all of this into a judgement about what is right, good, or reasonable. Precisely at this point an observation chain becomes a viewpoint. The evaluation is what is spoken in the meeting. The preceding levels are what has vanished.
Meetings frequently start at the evaluation. This way one cannot see what could also have been different. Retracing the path means arriving at the distinction through description and explanation.
If one reads Hans backwards through Simon, it becomes visible how the layers build upon each other. The evaluation states he is the happiest person. The explanation says he has got rid of everything heavy and faces no danger. The description names that the gold was heavy, the horse fast but uncontrollable, the cow gave no milk. The observation shows that Hans saw something specific and not something else. And the distinctions that order all of this run along dangerous and useful, heavy and light, comfort and value, present and future.
There, not at the well, a conversation could have begun. That is second-order observation. Not asking what someone thinks, but how someone came to think it.
Exploitation and Exploration
Here lies an obvious objection. “We do not have time to reconstruct the distinctions of all participants in every meeting.” That is true. And it would also be wrong to try.
Honeybee colonies solve a similar dilemma. A small proportion constantly searches for new food sources – the so-called scouts. The large majority of a colony are foragers who exploit known food sources. In good times almost all are foragers and only a few are scouts. The ratio is stable. When food becomes scarce, the colony changes the ratio considerably. A small proportion becomes a substantial one. The point is that no colony consists only of scouts, but no colony survives without them. Not every viewpoint needs to be questioned in every meeting. But a team that never questions operates blind.
The real difficulty lies one level deeper. How does the colony know whether sufficient food is still available or whether it has become scarce? The assessment of the situation is, after all, itself an assessment of the situation. Everything that applies to viewpoints also applies to the assessment of whether it is time to question viewpoints. “We don’t have time for fundamental debates” is itself a distinction. Someone has decided that it is something fundamental, that something else is more important right now, and that therefore there is no time for the debate. And this decision has a blind spot. That is not a thinking error but the structure of the problem. You cannot look at your own situation assessment from outside. You need others who distinguish differently.
Spotlights, Rationalities, Paths
A distinction can be understood like a spotlight. Bright enough to act. Dark enough to obscure something. That is the condition for action as a consequence of decision. We cannot always take everything into view. But whoever confuses the beam of light with the world has a problem.
This problem intensifies in organizations. Because there it is not only each individual who distinguishes in their own way – the division of labour itself ensures that different departments systematically take different things into view. Sales distinguishes by customer proximity, development by technical elegance, controlling by predictability. Each of these distinctions is rational, and each produces a different viewpoint. That is the structure of organizations with division of labour. The diversity of local rationalities is not the problem – it is the resource. But only if it becomes visible as diversity of distinctions and not as a collection of competing viewpoints.
This resource has an expiry date, however. Because with every decision a team makes, the space of what is still conceivable narrows. What is decided becomes the premise of the next decision. Whoever wants to uncover the diversity of distinctions only after the paths have already narrowed may arrive too late. Heinz von Foerster condensed this into one sentence: “Always act so as to increase the number of choices.” This is not a call for arbitrariness but a reminder to keep the narrowing effect in view. Uncovering waymarks expands the space. Merely exchanging viewpoints narrows it further.
A Team Can Be More Than the Sum of Its Viewpoints
Whoever sums up viewpoints collects outcomes. You can write them on a flipchart and vote on them. That is simply not discourse. And it falls short of what a team could achieve if it did not merely juxtapose outcomes but made the paths to them visible.
Because what emerges when a team uncovers waymarks is first an expanded space of options. It becomes visible what could also have been decided differently. This generates alternatives that had vanished in the viewpoint. And connectivity emerges, because someone who knows the other’s distinction can connect to it rather than merely opposing or acknowledging it. Multiperspectivity is the guarantor of continued communication. And finally, error tolerance increases, because decisions for the future can be made differently when it is clear under what conditions past decisions arose. Nobody has to lose face. The decision was not wrong – the distinction was a different one.
It is not better arguments that make the difference, but a team that knows how it arrived at its decisions and is therefore able to make future decisions differently. But only when the scouts in the team are actually allowed to scout, and when a team has understood that it is indeed time to have fundamental discourse. There must be no discourse for discourse’s sake. It must be worthwhile for the team and its environment to invest in reconstructing a viewpoint down to its fundamental distinctions.
Metrics Are Viewpoints
All of this applies not only to the viewpoints people make explicit in meetings. It also applies to what appears on dashboards.
A metric looks like a fact. It stands there, black on white, with decimal places and a trend arrow. But it is not a fact. It is an outcome. Someone has distinguished what is measured and what is not, which threshold separates good from bad, which dimension of performance should become visible. What remains is a number. The viewpoint at the well.
When an organization defines “faster” as a target, that is a distinction. Speed becomes the marked side. What vanishes on the unmarked side can be thoroughness, error tolerance, the ability to revise decisions, or the time needed to uncover distinctions at all. None of these dimensions appear on the dashboard. Not because they are unimportant, but because the distinction underlying the metric has made them invisible.
This effect becomes particularly clear when an organization attempts to measure performance at the individual level. The distinction then reads: visible is what the individual delivers. What vanishes on the unmarked side is everything that happens between individuals. Cross-functional coordination, shared problem-solving, investing in the work of others. At some point the organization notices that nobody works beyond their own area any more and looks for the cause in culture or motivation. But it lies in the distinction underlying the metric. Whoever measures individual performance has shifted collaboration into the unmarked state.
Whoever does not treat the metric as a viewpoint will be blinded by it. And the question is the same: Which distinction is behind it? And which is not?
It Is About More Useful Decisions
All of this initially sounds like a problem without an exit. If every distinction has a blind spot, if every operation vanishes in the moment of its execution, if even the assessment of the situation is a viewpoint – what remains?
Ultimately, what remains is relief. It is not about right or wrong. Nobody has to find or represent the one objectively correct viewpoint. The question is not whether Hans traded correctly, but which distinction would have led to a more useful decision. And this question can be asked – together, in hindsight, without blame.
The tools we use to develop viewpoints – observing, describing, explaining, evaluating – are also suited for reconstruction. They are mostly used forwards, rarely backwards. But backwards works too, and it can be very useful. Wherever it matters to increase the number of scouts – not everywhere and not for reconstruction’s sake.
This text is my viewpoint. I am convinced of it. But I have had waymarks where I could have decided differently. Whoever now thinks he was right, or he was wrong, is back with Hans. This text too is a chain of distinctions. They could have turned out differently, and perhaps at some points they should have.
What Now?
The text has shown how metrics function as viewpoints and how the distinction behind a measure determines what becomes visible and what vanishes. This can be taken further. Because the individual metric does not stand alone. It is embedded in something larger – in what an organization understands as performance, how it measures, rewards, and demands it.
Performance culture is itself a viewpoint. And as with every viewpoint, the question arises which distinctions produced it and what they make invisible. Whoever takes this question seriously does not question performance itself but the distinction that determines what counts as performance. That would be a start.